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Courtesan
Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760-1849)
ca. 1796-1798
- Medium
- Ink and color on paper
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W (image): 71.4 × 24.2 cm (28 1/8 × 9 1/2 in)
- Culture
- Japanese
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Charles Lang Freer
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
The woman portrayed in this early painting by Hokusai holds the edge of her garment in her mouth, a gesture that signifies passion, perhaps inspired by the love letter she clutches in her right hand. Her sinuous pose, curved like a reversed "S", is highly stylized and closely resembles the pose portrayed in The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, painted by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and exhibited in the Freer gallery's Peacock Room. Whistler's work reflects many ideas from his observation of Japanese art. Both Whistler's Princess and this painting by Hokusai were purchased in 1903 by Charles Lang Freer, who is likely to have recognized the similar pose in the Japanese work.
